ON THE OLYMPICS.

N.Y.'s Olympic bid faces high hurdles

April 20, 2004|BY PHILIP HERSH.

NEW YORK — Dan Doctoroff was a banker with little passion for soccer when a friend invited him to Giants Stadium for the 1994 World Cup semifinal between Italy and Bulgaria, a match tens of thousands of other New Yorkers would have considered the biggest local sporting event in the metropolitan area's history.

Maybe that is why Doctoroff was able to see the match as more than a sporting event. His mind focused on something he had never experienced before--the nationalistic pride and passion that imbued the fans, a fervor Doctoroff was convinced would emanate from New York City for almost any two countries in the world.

That led Doctoroff to wonder why the most international city in the world never had been host to the most international sporting event in the world, the Olympics. When he found no good reason, the question became a dream Doctoroff did not mention outside his family for the next 18 months.

"Even they thought I was crazy," he said about what would become a personal passion.

A decade later, Doctoroff answers to the titles of deputy mayor and founder of NYC2012. His dream has become a $50 million, privately funded effort to bring the 2012 Olympic Games to New York, a quest that has become increasingly less quixotic--if still far from reality--in the last 18 months.

On Nov. 2, 2002, the U.S. Olympic Committee picked New York over San Francisco as the U.S. candidate for 2012. On May 18, the International Olympic Committee's executive board almost certainly will name New York a finalist for the host-city election July 6, 2005, in Singapore.

To win, New York must overcome local opposition to the linchpin of its brilliant if utopian Olympic plan, a $1.4 billion stadium/convention center on the Hudson River. It must deal with lingering anti-U.S. feelings about Bush administration policies on several issues, primarily the war in Iraq.

It must convince the State Department to be more expedient in dealing with visas for visitors--from tourists to athletes--to the U.S. It must convince about 120 IOC members that chaotic, wacky, wonderful New York can handle the gargantuan organizational problem the Olympics has become.

And it must deal with the uneven legacy left when the last Olympic dreamer from the U.S., Billy Payne, had a vision that came to him in church turn into the 1996 Atlanta Games. Those Centennial Games would be praised as a sports event and reviled for poor organization and for looking like a county fair on steroids.

Doctoroff believes the success of the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics was the right medicine for the Atlanta hangover. Headaches caused by global ill will are not as easily cured.

New York is emphasizing its international nature, noting its schools include children from 199 of the 202 countries that will send teams to the 2004 Olympics. (Missing: Liechtenstein, Palau and the Cook Islands). "New York is an Olympic village every day," goes the bid committee's mantra.

"In no way are we denying we are part of the United States, but people clearly look at New York as a world city," Doctoroff said.

Never has such an imposing group of major world cities bid for an Olympics. The nine candidates include Paris, London, Moscow, Madrid and Istanbul.

"New York is the only major, major city that has not hosted an Olympics," noted Peter Ueberroth, who ran the immensely successful 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.

IOC President Jacques Rogge has been widely cited as having said all nine cities could advance. Rogge said that was not what he meant in answers to a German journalist, whose story last year led to an assumption no cities would be eliminated.

"I said clearly the cutoff will be the cities that do not have the quality," Rogge said in a recent interview with the Tribune. "I had no answer [then] as to how many there would be because I hadn't seen the files.

"I said if we had nine perfect files, all could be retained. Realism tells you it is very unlikely we will have nine cities."

The likely finalists are New York, Madrid, Paris, Moscow, Rio de Janeiro and London, which would eliminate Istanbul, Havana and Leipzig, Germany. Rio would be included for geopolitical correctness--no South American country has been an Olympic host. London could be eliminated, given its withdrawal as host of the 2005 world track and track championships because stadium plans fell through.

New York's stadium plans also are uncertain.

While a recent poll said 77 percent of New Yorkers believed it would be a "good thing" for the city to have the Olympics, 47 percent--and 62 percent of Manhattanites--thought the proposed stadium would be a "bad thing."

"There is no Plan B," Doctoroff said of the stadium/convention center proposal, backed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and New York Gov. George Pataki.

The New York Jets, who would be the primary sports tenant, are to pay $800 million of the cost for a stadium with a retractable roof that would turn the building into added convention space. The city and state would pay $300 million each. The city would spend another $2.77 billion for subway expansion, site preparation (notably a platform over railroad yards) and creation of parkland in an area encompassing 30th to 41st Street from 10th to 12th Avenue.

Doctoroff said the Hudson Yards complex would return a $32 million annual profit. New York City Council member Christine Quinn, whose district includes the affected area, has called those numbers "a house of cards" and vowed to fight the project.